Post by
ldoggy on Apr 06, 2012 9:23am
UNDT
April 6, 2012 - Wall Street Journal - Radiation Worries Spur 'Quackery' Cures In Japan - In the year-plus since the world's worst nuclear accident in a quarter-century, Japan saw a run of dubious products aimed at detecting or alleviating radiation's effects. In January, Japan's nursery-school association issued a fraud alert on a company, Japan QRS Health Management Association, that claims it could measure a person's internal radiation accumulation with a machine reading an electromagnetic aura from snips of the person's hair. That prompted Tokyo's Bureau of Social Welfare and Public Health to open a probe. A suit that supposedly makes the wearer sweat out radiation was flagged as suspect by the government last July. Japan's consumer-watchdog agency also took note of bathtubs priced at $6,500 that purport to suck radiation out of bathers, among the items that led it to issue a report warning consumers. In Iwaki, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of the Fukushima nuclear plant where the accident occurred in March 2011, the emergency-response department said it received a barrage of radiation-related pitches. The vendors appear to be taking a profit from the public's worries over radiation exposure in post-accident Japan, particularly in areas near the plant with contamination.
April 6, 2012 - Digital Journal - Ticks wander into airless high-radiation; act like it's a picnic - Japanese researchers have discovered that ticks can survive the extreme radiation and airless vacuum inside an electron scanning microscope, making them the first animal to ever be viewed moving and alive in such conditions. Being inside of a scanning electron microscopes is an extremely hostile environment. Emitting beams of strong radiation in an airless vacuum, it's been a given that anything destined to enter the microscope won't ever be coming out alive. They're meant to view dead material at remarkably high magnifications, and that's it. However, that wasn't the case for ticks at Kanazawa Medical University, in Uchinada, Japan, when they unknowingly crawled carefree through desiccator tubes in the environment, where anything else would have met its demise. Water bears (tardigrades), the previous title-holder for toughest bug, were able to survive the high radiation as well, and even the vacuum of space, but only after being dehydrated into a nigh-mummified state of hibernation. Ticks, on the other hand, need no such treatment. The ticks weren't invincible though, unfortunately. The beams of strong radiation do damage them, as does a prolonged vacuum, just not enough to kill them initially as they survived after 30 minutes of exposure.
April 6, 2012 - Reuters - Cut nuclear reliance to zero-Japan energy minister - Japan should aspire to phase out nuclear power completely, its energy minister said on Friday, even as the government struggles to persuade a wary public that it is safe to restart reactors after the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years. Yukio Edano, whose trade portfolio makes him responsible for energy, couched his remark as a personal and not necessarily realistic view - though it could still anger utilities and industries eager to see nuclear power bounce back. "The government's policy is now to reduce reliance on nuclear power as low as possible," Edano said, adding that it should in future account for less than the third of national electricity it supplied before last year's Fukushima crisis.